Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes

  But that summer Lemry saw me swimming at a public pool and talked me into trying out for her AAU swim team, and Sarah Byrnes and I began drifting away from each other. She said it was me and I said it was her. For the first year, I ate like more of a pig than I am just to show her I wouldn’t get svelte and handsome and popular so she’d have to hate me, but as workouts increased in length and intensity, my eating barrage couldn’t stand up to my changing metabolism and I began to get occasional glimpses of my feet.

  “Look,” Sarah Byrnes said one day during our freshman year, after I’d been working out almost eleven months, “if you keep eating like a starving Biafran turned loose at the Food Circus just to prove me wrong about why we’re friends, you’ll die of a heart attack before you’re fifteen. So stop already.”

  It was a relief, because I was actually starting to feel good about myself from swimming—at least better—and Lemry was ready to send me to “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” to find out why I was swimming four to six thousand yards a day and still puffing up like a blowfish. “But what if I’m not fat?” I blurted in desperation. “Will you still be my friend?”

  “God,” Sarah Byrnes said. “You’re such a lamebrain. It isn’t me who’ll go away, it’s you. People will just look at you differently than they do now. Other people will like you, and you’ll go to them. It’s not a big deal, Eric. It’s just the way things work.”

  For the thousandth time I protested, but she raised a scarred hand. “Don’t worry. I’ve always known this. It doesn’t even hurt.”

  Sarah Byrnes wasn’t completely right, though she wasn’t completely wrong, either. We did spend less time together, but mostly just because swimming takes a lot of time. I tried to get her to turn out with me, but she gave me a quick, graphic dermatology lesson on the effects of chlorine and intense sunlight on burn scars and that was that. I still saw her almost every day and we still did things together on a regular basis, but she struck up a cautious friendship with Dale Thornton, I think as a hedge against possible losses, and wasn’t available as much of the time.

  I made it my life’s resolution to refuse any invitation that excluded Sarah Byrnes. Even though she rarely agreed to go anywhere with me, when I brought her name up, if one nose crinkled, I uninvited myself on the spot. That’s how I stay fat for her now.

  “Wanna have an adventure?” Ellerby and I navigate the Christian Cruiser through the dusky streets. It’s Saturday night, about 7:30, and we’re killing time before the dance over at the school gym.

  “What’ll it be?” he says. “Zero to thirteen miles an hour in the space of one short city block? Crank up the sound system and drive back and forth in front of Brittain’s place?”

  “Better,” I said. “Let’s take her down to the Edison district.”

  “You want to be an organ donor?” The Edison district has a tavern for approximately every three-point-five people over the age of six, and Spokane absolutely depends on it to keep our crime rate equal to or above other US cities of our relative size.

  “There’s somebody down there I need to talk to,” I say. “We won’t be there long.”

  “No,” Ellerby says, flipping a U-ie, “we probably won’t.”

  In the neighborhoods behind the Edison strip, most streetlights are broken, and twisted street signs point in directions where there aren’t streets, so it takes us a while to find West Reardon. Ellerby drops the Cruiser to about ten miles per hour so I can read the numbers. I’ve only been to Dale Thornton’s place once, and that was back in junior high when he made Sarah Byrnes and me prove we liked him by going there. I went, but I didn’t like him.

  “Here.” Ellerby pulls up in front of a ramshackle cottage with a tilted garage off to one side and several rusted-out cars and a truck on blocks in the front yard. “This has to be it—I remember that truck. Be careful. I think a dog lives in it.”

  Ellerby leaves the engine running, and I step onto a dirt road thinly coated with ice. A dim light shines from the living room, and I move cautiously up the sidewalk, eyeing the old truck from which I fully expect a saber-toothed junkyard mutt to spring, flashing yellow eyes locked on my jugular.

  It doesn’t happen. I take a deep breath and knock as Ellerby moves silently up the walk behind me. Canine thunder bursts forth from inside, followed by a deep, booming, “SHUT UP!” When the door opens, I’m staring at the three-day-stubbled face of Morton Thornton, aka Butch. I hope Dale never told him about the Crispy Pork Rinds story, or at least who wrote it. His beer-blurred eyes tell me he wouldn’t remember anyway.

  “Is Dale at home?”

  He squints suspiciously. “Yeah. Out back. In the garage.”

  “Okay if we talk with him?”

  “Okay with me,” he says, “if it’s okay with him. Go around and kick the door,” and we hop off the side of the porch. “An’ don’t come knockin’ on my door at night without no appointment.”

  “Right friendly part of town,” Ellerby whispers as we make our way through the pitch dark, over batteries and car hoods and enough spare parts to build a spaceship.

  A bright light shines through the broken windowpane in the garage door, and I peer in to see a body bent over the engine of a station wagon that is the match of Ellerby’s from a negative universe. A radio on the workbench blares pure country and Dale sings along, amazingly on key.

  My hard knock brings no response, so I follow Mr. Thornton’s advice and give it a kick, bringing Dale’s head up hard under the sharp rim of the hood. He says, “Shit!” and turns down the radio.

  I’m surprised at the neatness of his makeshift shop. Each tool hangs on the wall inside a meticulously drawn outline of that tool. The surface of the workbench is clean and the floor is swept. Dale stands, bright light shining in his eyes, holding his end wrench like a revolver recently fired, his legs spread like a gunslinger’s. But he’s so small. Dale Thornton hasn’t grown one inch since junior high school. His tight, sleeveless T-shirt displays the same muscle definition, outlining his washboard stomach, but he’s little.

  “Dale?” I say.

  He squints. “Who wants to know?”

  “It’s Eric. Eric Calhoune.”

  “Who?”

  “Remember? From junior high? I wrote that newspaper with you and Sarah Byrnes.”

  He smiles a bit and steps forward. “Scarface?” he says. Then, “Oh, Fat Boy.”

  “Yeah. That’s me.”

  He places the wrench carefully on the workbench, pulling a grease rag from his hip pocket. “What the hell you doin’ here? Who’s this?”

  “This is Ellerby,” I say, and Steve steps forward, offering his hand. Dale looks down at his own hand, still black with grease, smiles and shakes Ellerby’s hand. Dale hasn’t changed much.

  “So, Fat Boy, what you doin’ here? I ain’t seen you in three years or so. Thought you hated my guts.”

  I smile sheepishly. “Naw,” I say. “I never hated your guts. I was just scared of you, that’s all.”

  Ellerby approaches the old Pontiac with reverence, circling slowly, touching the rough, dark gray primed doors and mirrors, peering in under the hood at the engine highlighted by the droplight. Dale’s eyes follow him suspiciously, then dart back to me.

  “So how is old Scarface?” he asks.

  “Not so hot. She’s in the hospital.”

  “Got herself sick or somethin’, huh? Too bad. I kinda liked her. She was a real hardass.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say, “she’s not sick like that. She’s having head trouble. She just stopped talking one day. Wouldn’t get out of her desk. They finally had some guys come and take her right from school.”

  Dale moves closer to Ellerby, as if to be certain he doesn’t get away with any spare engine parts. “That right? That don’t sound like her. I thought she’d end up kickin’ somebody’s ass. Like that prick Mautz.”

  I smile. “Quit talkin’ before she could get around to that.”

  “So how come you come to see me?” He
looks at Ellerby and can’t stand it anymore. “What you lookin’ at?” It’s a challenge.

  Ellerby looks up in surprise. “Nothing,” he says. “I mean, I’ve got a car just like this, and I’ve been looking for somebody to work the engine. Dealer’s too expensive. You know a lot about this thing?”

  Dale puffs up. “I know ever’thing about this thing. You want anything did to it, I’m your man. Course you got to pay.”

  “Course,” Ellerby says back. “Tell you what. I can do the body work on one of these babies, but I’m not much of an engine man. Maybe we can trade some labor.”

  “Maybe,” Dale says, his defenses down a bit in the face of this common interest.

  I answer his original question. “The reason I came to see you is I remember once you told Sarah Byrnes that she didn’t get her scars from a boiling pot of spaghetti. Remember that?”

  “Remember it? Shit, she liked to took my head off. That’s how I knew I was right.”

  “You still think that?”

  Dale smiles. “Never heard her come out an’ deny it, did you? Why? What binness is it of yours?”

  “The people at the hospital are just looking for reasons she might have quit talking.”

  Dale leans against the car door. “Well, there’s a bunch of goddamn geniuses,” he says. “One look’ll give you all the reasons you want.”

  I agree. “Yeah, but they’re looking for more. I mean, she’s always looked like that, but she just stopped talking recently.”

  “Well, I don’t know nothin’ about talkin’ or not talkin’, but I’ll tell you what. There wasn’t no pot of spaghetti. You can count on that.”

  “Sarah Byrnes tell you that?”

  “Hell no. Scarface didn’t tell nobody nothin’. But I know. I seen her with her dad a couple a’ times, an’ I know.”

  “How…”

  Dale stares as if I’m a dog turd on his plate. “You guys seen my old man? Think I can’t tell when somebody’s got a nasty pappy? Hell, I seen Sarah Byrnes with her daddy once even before I knew he was kickin’ her ass regular an’ I could tell right off.”

  “You think her dad burned her?”

  Dale shrugs. “You figure it out.” He looks a little closer at me. “Hey, Fat Boy, you lost some weight, huh? An’ growed. I might have a hard time takin’ all your shit from you these days.” He laughs. “Guess I changed careers just in time.”

  “No, Dale,” I say, “I think you wouldn’t have any trouble taking all my shit even today.”

  Ellerby gets Dale’s number for business purposes, and we’re outta there.

  “What do you think?” I ask Ellerby as we glide through the darkened streets away from Dale Thornton’s house toward the freeway.

  “I think Dale Thornton lives in a very scary part of town,” he says. “And I think he knows about cars.” Then he answers my real question. “I think guys like Dale Thornton don’t lie.”

  “So you think Sarah Byrnes’s dad did something to her, like to her face?”

  “I don’t know,” he says, “but when I want to know about swimming, I ask Lemry. When I want to know about my teeth, I ask my dentist.” He glances over. “Always go to the expert. If I wanted to know about hard times, I could do worse than to ask Dale Thornton.”

  I sit back. Ellerby’s right, and I’m smart enough to have figured that out. But Sarah Byrnes is my friend. She was with me when nobody else was. In the days of my life when my body embarrassed and humiliated me every time anyone laid eyes on me, Sarah Byrnes—this person with fifty times my reason to be embarrassed and humiliated—walked with me, even ahead of me. I can’t stand to imagine someone hurting her like that on purpose.

  CHAPTER 7

  I’m standing behind Brittain and Jody at Lemry’s desk, minutes before the second bell. Because my ears are tuned in like a phone tap from the Nixon White House, I can’t help but overhear the conversation.

  “We’re thinking of dropping the course,” Brittain is saying to Lemry.

  “We?” Lemry says, eyebrows raised.

  “Jody and me.”

  “Too demanding?” Lemry asks. She doesn’t mean it. Brittain is a straight-A student. The guy has a memory like a fax machine.

  “No,” he says. “I don’t think the subject material is cut out for us.”

  You don’t have to be an astrophysicist to know Brittain’s speaking as if he has a turd in his back pocket is going as far up Lemry’s feminist nose as is possible without the use of an exploratory probe. “I’m having pronoun trouble here,” she says. “‘I,’ meaning you in the singular, ‘don’t think the subject material is cut out for us’?”

  Brittain nods while Jody shifts nervously from foot to foot. I put my mouth close to her ear. “If you ever want a boyfriend who encourages freedom of expression,” I whisper, “dial 1–800-FAT-BOY.” I have decided over the past few days that passive admiration may not be the best way to get a girl. If it were, Jody’d have been mine long ago.

  She smiles nervously and moves a step away from me.

  “I just don’t think it’s healthy for us to sit by while people knock the Lord,” Brittain says, ignoring Lemry’s challenge to separate himself from Jody. “It’s blasphemy, pure and simple.”

  “Then I would think the Lord would want you to stay and defend him.” Lemry glances around Brittain to Jody. “Jody, is Mark talking for you?”

  Jody nods. “Yes. I mean, I guess so. We decided to take our electives together this year.”

  Lemry nods. “Well, I hate to be the one to break up your little alliance, but I’m an educator, not a dating service, and in order to drop a class after five days you need my signature on your drop card. I’m willing to sign yours, Mark, on the grounds that you don’t feel compelled to stand up for your convictions, and I don’t want it to appear as if the school is challenging your religious beliefs. I won’t, however, sign yours, Jody, because wanting to be with your boyfriend twenty-three hours a day does not constitute reason for a transfer. Of course, you’re free to pursue the issue with the front office.”

  “No,” Jody says without expression, “that’s okay.” She turns to walk to her seat.

  I can feel myself falling out of love with Jody. It’s like she’s the Pillsbury Doughgirl. Doesn’t this girl ever tell anybody to go to hell?

  Brittain stands stiff before Lemry’s desk, his neck and face reddening. “That isn’t fair,” he says, in the perfectly controlled tone that makes me want to cram a banana down his throat, then reach in and peel it. “You’re persecuting us because of our beliefs.”

  “Mark,” Lemry says patiently, “I said I was willing to sign your drop slip. A number of my beliefs may even match yours. Now the bell has rung. Either give me your card, or take your seat.”

  Brittain glances over at Jody, but she does not acknowledge him. Having forgotten why I was standing there in the first place, I walk toward the seat behind Jody, the one Brittain seems about to vacate. “Excuse me,” I say, just loud enough for him to hear, “is this seat taken?”

  Brittain crumples his card and walks briskly to his seat, and I willingly step away. Truth is, this class wouldn’t be half the fun without his Jimmy Swaggart zeal. I return to my regular seat across the aisle to find a note folded neatly on the desk top. I open it and silently read: 1–800-FAT-BOY doesn’t have enough digits to be a real phone number. Please advise.

  Sarah Byrnes sits across from me in what has become our nightly standoff. It occurs to me that if she actually is understanding every word I say and choosing not to respond, it pisses me off. Today I’m going to try to find out.

  “Brittain almost quit Lemry’s class today,” I say, in keeping with so-called normal conversation. “Lemry would have let him go, but he tried to take his girlfriend with him.” I didn’t mention Jody’s note or my lustful imaginings about her. Sarah Byrnes has never been someone with whom I felt comfortable talking about my illusory love life. Since she can’t imagine having one of her own, talking about it see
ms cruel.

  I mention CAT class. “We even talked about you a little,” I say. “About what it must be like to be burned and everything.” I think I see a flicker, but that road has dead-ended before. “Actually, Lemry cut that short because you weren’t there to give your permission or your input.”

  Nothing.

  “Dale Thornton thinks your dad had something to do with you getting burned.”

  Sarah Byrnes’s head jerks, and she penetrates far enough into my eyes for corneal surgery. Her jaw clamps tight; then, as quickly as she looked, she’s glazed over.

  “That’s what I thought,” I say. “You’ve been hearing me all along. You could talk if you wanted to, I’ll bet. I thought you were too tough to just pull an el foldo.”

  Nothing.

  “Anyway, I remembered what Dale said that day right before we closed shop on Crispy Pork Rinds, how you almost tore him a new one when he said you knew about bad dads the same way he did.” But the shock effect is gone. I badger her a little longer, but this girl has a will of steel, and that’s it for today.

  I see the nurse headed our way and think better of mentioning Sarah Byrnes’s response. If she’s faking, there’s a reason, and if I blow her cover she’ll get even. And if you had your choice of having Saddam Hussein or Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler or Sarah Byrnes after you, you’d pick A, B, and C only, before you picked D. On the off chance she’s not faking, if I just penetrated her catatonia for a second before it regained control, then nothing has changed. I’ll try her out a few more times before I say anything to anyone. Shit, maybe I should grow up to be a psychologist.

  I plop the note Jody left on my desk during Lemry’s class three days ago on top of Ellerby’s burger bun.

  “What’s this?” he asks as I snatch it back from between his greasy fingers.

  “The legal document for my entry into heaven.” I give him enough history to lend meaning to the strange message.

  “No shit,” he says, reading as I hold the note. “I didn’t think Jody Mueller was real. I mean, I considered her Brittain’s Stepford wife.”